Decades After This Serial Rapist Was At Large, Police Used DNA To Finally Bring Him To Justice

It’s September 2018, and safety specialist Roy Waller arrives at UC Berkeley ready for a day’s work. But little does he know the twist that fate has in store. Behind the scenes, police officers have been meticulously tracking the DNA of a violent attacker who stalked northern California for 15 years. And now, they think they’ve got the assailant in their sights.

The story began back in 1991 in Sonoma County’s Rohnert Park, which is located some 50 miles outside of San Francisco, CA. That year, a 21-year-old woman was raped in the city, kicking off a reign of terror that would fill entire neighborhoods with a sense of dread.

After that first attack, the man who became known as the NorCal rapist targeted another woman in the nearby city of Sonoma. And in 1992 he moved southeast to Vallejo in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he assaulted a 30-year-old female. Then, for four years, he appeared to go off the authorities’ radar – although it’s possible that he continued to commit unreported crimes.